The company is "in stealth mode," according to its website, which indicates only that it develops semiconductors to address "significant infrastructure challenges."

Cisco had little more to say concerning Leaba's field of work in its blog post about the acquisition by Rob Salvagno, head of its mergers, acquisitions, and venture investment team.

However, according to information provided by Israel's Ministry of Economy, Leaba specializes in the design of chips for connecting memory, storage, and compute in data center environments.

The company's software manager, Omer Sali, is a former data center manager, according to his LinkedIn profile, while the company's CEO Eyal Dagan and other senior figures are former employees of semiconductor company Broadcom.

Cisco will pay $320 million in cash and equity for the young company and plans to incorporate it into its own engineering team, reporting into its Core Hardware Group, led by Senior Vice President Ravi Cherukuri.